The casket of Officer Thor Soderberg arrives at the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Memorial Chapel this morning for a public memorial. (Alex Garcia/Tribune) In an uplifting memorial celebrating Chicago Police Officer Thor Soderberg's life, his wife shared stories of a man who enjoyed 43 years of laughter, love and adventure. "And making fun of the rest of us in the world," Jennifer Loudon chuckled. Loudon, who wore Soderberg's favorite dress to the service, told how much her husband loved being a Chicago police officer.

Before ripping away Chicago police officer Thor Soderberg's handgun and shooting him dead with it, Bryant Brewer, a felon with a long arrest record, inexplicably tried getting inside the last place anyone would expect him to go: a renovated police facility full of cops. Moments before Soderbergh, an 11-year police veteran, was killed Wednesday, Brewer strolled down 61st Street, screaming and hollering at no one in particular before he tried opening a locked door to the old Englewood police station that now serves as a police deployment center, according to a witness.

Moments after a Chicago police officer was shot dead , Richard Mints found himself in the sights of the gunman. As he sat on a porch waiting to go to work, Mints said the man walked toward him and -- saying nothing and showing no expression -- fired three or four shots at him from about 20 feet away. "He didn't say nothing, he just (started) shooting," Mints recalled today, a day after the shooting. "All I could see was my life going before my eyes and trying to get away.

Chicago Supt. Jody Weis said today he "simply cannot understand" how the man charged with gunning down an officer "can have such a total disregard of life. " "The entire department is saddened beyond belief," Weis said hours after Bryant Brewer, 24, was charged. "The entire city should be enraged. " Brewer is accused of grabbing Officer Thor Soderberg's gun and fatally shooting him in the parking lot of a police facility in Englewood Wednesday afternoon.

Chicago police and cadets salute during a ceremony outside the Chicago Police Academy dedicated to slain police officer Thor Soderberg this morning. (Alex Garcia/Tribune) A veteran Chicago police officer assigned to a special unit to tamp down youth violence was shot to death Wednesday afternoon as he left an Englewood police building in a dangerous stretch of that South Side neighborhood. Authorities said an assailant took Officer Thor Soderberg's gun and fatally shot him. Those who knew the 43-year-old officer, normally an instructor at the police training academy, were horrified to learn of his death.

A series of violent outbreaks across the city overnight left four people dead and at least six others wounded. The latest person to die from a spate of gun violence overnight was a 20-year-old man, who was shot in the head about 11 p.m. Wednesday in the 1100 block of North Wood Street. That victim, Angel Alvarez, of the 1700 block of West Augusta Boulevard, was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 1:14 p.m. this afternoon, said a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner's office.

A DePaul University student was ordered held in lieu of $80,000 bail today in connection with the hit-and-run death of a pedestrian on the Northwest Side earlier this week. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Jackie Marie Portman set the bail amount for Talia Ramos, 22 (right), who was charged Friday with leaving the scene of a fatal accident and failure to give information and render aid, according to police. Ramos was arrested about five blocks from the crash about 10:30 p.m. Thursday at Grace Street and Cicero Avenue that killed Arturo Bracho, 57, authorities said.

Loyola University student Liza Whitacre loved life -- especially one where she could roam freely through Chicago's streets on a bicycle. But a freak accident ended her life on Wednesday as she and her roommate rode their bikes through the Lakeview neighborhood. Whitacre, of the 4900 block of North Winthrop Avenue, fell from her bike, landed underneath a truck and was run over by the vehicle outside Hamlin Park on Damen and Wellington Avenues. Police said she was trying to pass between the truck and a CTA bus when she fell off her bike.

Sharon Ramey, left, mother of Stacy Cochran-Hill, and Ramey's sister Estelle Baker grieve at their home following the news that Stacy Cochran-Hill and her two girls were found stabbed to death in an apartment late Monday in the Morgan Park neighborhood. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Tribune) More photos HERE . Jade Hannah loved to dance and was so loud you always knew if she was around. Her younger sister, Joi Cochran, was quieter, a girlish princess who loved to dress up and have her hair done.

Adolescence was a hectic time for Terrence Green. Although he had aspirations to play professional football one day and work in real estate, the 16-year-old's interest in girls occupied a good portion of his life. But according to Green's family, his lack of interest in one particular girl may have gotten him killed. Green was fatally shot Friday afternoon near his Englewood home, possibly by a brother of a girl who Green once turned down, his father, Tony Owens, said today.

A South Side man was charged with murder today for kicking his estranged wife in the middle of a fight on a third-floor porch, causing her to lose hold of her newborn son, who fell to his death, authorities said. Charges of first-degree murder were approved this afternoon against Jason Range, 20, in the death of Jeremiah Range, according to a spokeswoman with the Cook County state's attorney's office. Five-week-old Jeremiah was being carried down the porch steps, unsecured in a carseat, when Range allegedly kicked his estranged wife in the back, according to police reports.

One of the two Chicago cousins accused of killing three men and a female acquaintance in a prostitution ruse pleaded guilty Monday to the slayings. Caroline Peoples, 31, pleaded to four counts of first-degree murder for four separate fatal shootings that prosecutors said were motivated by money. Peoples will leave her fate in the hands of a jury, as attorneys for both sides plan to meet Aug. 31 to plan her sentencing. Prosecutors say that Peoples and her cousin Angel Wright-Ford, also 31, killed three South Side men over a month in spring 2004 after they crafted a plan to pose as prostitutes to rob their johns.